Take Five
by Fair-Ithil
Summary: Somethings never happened for Shannon Rutherford...


**Disclaimer: Don't own Lost. **

**Spoilers: None really**

**A/N: **Always wanted to do one of these. **Shannon PoV, Shannon/OC and ShannonSayid.** These vary from **Pre-Island** to **Post-Crash** and then stray into the wonderful world of **AU **but I guess that's more than allowed…Read, Enjoy, Let me know what you think.

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_Five Things That Never Happened To Shannon Rutherford_

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_Shannon Never Almost Had A Vegas Marriage_

-

They were drunk.

Very, very drunk.

She was eighteen and Sabrina was being Evil and Boone was being Spineless and the only thing that had made sense at the time was to get into Daniel's car and drive away for a Vegas weekend.

And in the ever clichéd way, they found themselves without anything to do and too much liquor and ever so drunk that nothing else really mattered.

There was no ring, and no flowery speech, just slurred words and smeared eyeliner that caused drunken laughter and the hangover from hell in the morning, when the fake Elvis found them in the waiting room, knocked out on the hot pink love seat, asking if they had any money.

But by then the thought of marriage had lost it's appeal and she had disappeared onto the street, back to the hotel room where she locked herself in the bathroom and threw up till at long last she could reach for the phone.

'_Boone?'_

She was on a plane within the hour.

_-_

_Shannon Never Had The Fairy Tale Wedding_

-

She was twenty, newly a college dropout, with a diamond ring that could have sunk a small ship.

Matthew Rutherford had asked not three months ago, in uptown New York, an elegant restaurant with wine and roses and 'I love you's shared as freely as his checkbook.

All around was white and satin and lace, purity and innocent that Shannon had lost long before this moment, personified. Surely one of Sabrina's touches, Sabrina who had taken control of the planning from week two.

Her dress had been huge, tulle and pearls and silk, the princess dress every little girl dreamed of, so white that she could find every flaw in her own skin, the dark half-moons beneath her eyes even more pronounced despite the hour long sit in the make-up chair.

The ceremony was held in a candle lit ballroom, Boone walked her own the aisle with a tight-lipped smile while Sabrina tried to look proud.

But the marriage didn't last, nothing lasted for her, and a year later she found herself in Paris, minus one husband.

The name stuck.

In later days, while she lies on the beach soaking in the sun, she won't remember the dress or the ballroom or the groom. She'll remember the cake; royal icing that melted against smiling lips, and raised glasses. She'll remember hope.

_-_

_Shannon Never Had An Island Proposal _

-

They were standing waist deep in the ocean.

The ring was made of bent wire and a piece of smooth glass he must have salvaged from the scraps. He wasn't kneeling and there was no elevated speech, just a simple 'I love you', which were scarce from him but meant the world to her, whispered against her hair in the dark of their tent in the twilight that came before dawn when she couldn't be sure whether or not they were dreams.

'Will you do me the honor?' He asked, words carefully crafted on his tongue as all his words were.

There could be no real wedding, no official marriage, not on the island.

But he looked at her with open eyes, a ring of bent wire and ocean glass in his hands, 'I love you' still in the air.

And she knew.

She knew then with all the certainty she always longed to feel in the quiet moments that they shared, when he would kiss her and she could still feel the sting of doubt beneath it all.

'Yes.'

There could be no real wedding, no official marriage, not on the island, just a promise.

It was enough.

_-_

_Shannon Never Couldn't Reach Her Shoes_

-

She was fat.

She was fat and sore and had lost the ability to bend at least two months ago.

The daily task of putting on her shoes had become a matter of trial and error as the backs of her well-worn tennis shoes plotted against her and refused to slip around her heel without coaxing.

In the morning she would wait until he slipped out of their shelter to put on her shoes, earning odd looks from him upon his return when he would find her out of breath with her tennis shoes on and the too short sundress Claire had give her.

One morning her left shoe betrayed her, falling away until she not only could she not see it, she could not feel it anywhere in her general area.

'Shannon?' she could hear the smile in his voice without having to turn around—not that she could have easily at this point from her seat on their ground level bed. She grit her teeth and poked around with her foot trying to find the damn shoe before he got too good a look at her predicament.

'Shannon what are you doing?'

She let out a frustrated sigh that ended with a grunt and the child within chose the very moment to kick at her spleen.

He walked towards her then, around her handicapped form on their bedding and knelt before her.

'Looking for this?' He was trying not to laugh, she could tell by the crinkled lines around his eyes, and the small smile at the corner of his mouth and for all her love for him she could have gladly grabbed the shoe from his hand and beat him about the head with it.

'This is all your fault.' She ground out, face hot, back aching—that baby still going at her spleen. She looked down, spying her knees, which poked out from under the frayed hem of Claire's borrowed dress, and scab formed from the fall she took not two days ago at the caves.

'Jack says it won't be long now.'

He lifted her foot against his thigh, fingers kneading her calf.

'For all we know the baby will be here by next week.' She grunted in response.

He slipped her shoe on her foot and kissed the scab on her knee.

'I'm fat.'

'Growing to support our child.'

'I'm irritable.'

'Understandably so.'

'I can't even reach my shoes.'

'Well,' He said as he reached for her hands and kissed her forehead, ' I shall reach them for you.'

_-_

_Shannon never had to say the eulogy…_

-

She wasn't sure what she was supposed to say.

Her tongue was heavy behind her teeth and the sun was blinding from its place in the sky. She could feel her shirt, damp with sweat, sticking to her back uncomfortably, the once airy satin now wrinkled and frayed after its three year stay on the island. No dry cleaners on Craphole Island after all.

Before her his body was lowered into the earth, dark brown soil that crumpled and fell away even as he was laid to rest not two feet away from his daughter.

Her eyes were surprisingly dry, and she thought for a moment that maybe the island had already taken all her tears.

She squinted in the sunlight, the aroma of the flowers in Sun's hands turning putrid in her nostrils in the scorching heat.

'Sayid—'she began, the words halting in her throat. Her tongue refused to cooperate and her vision blurred. She wished he'd get up, wished he'd rescue her from the silence the way he had when Boone was buried. But he didn't. He couldn't.

He was gone. Like her father, like her brother, like their daughter. He was gone and the reality of it all hit her like a lorry.

Sunlight, inescapable heat, the overwhelming smell of jungle orchids and crumpling soil, him—soon to be hidden away forever.

'I—'

_I loved him._

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End 

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